Frank Ordonez / The Post-Standard Henniger High School junior Juan Burgos looks at a fellow student who purchases a T-shirt that Burgos designed and is selling on behalf of his best friend's brother, Pablo Saralegui, who is battling cancer. Other Henninger students helped Burgos sell the shirts during lunch at school recently.

Juan Burgos was about to jump into the water at swim practice last month when his friend Nico Saralegui told him his little brother, Pablo, had a liver tumor. The news hit so hard Juan had to leave practice.

Juan, 16, is a junior at Henninger High School in Syracuse and has been good friends with Nico since ninth grade. He goes over to the Saralegui family house on the Southwest Side almost every weekend and treats Pablo, 11, as if he were his own little brother.

“Nico’s family feels like my own,” Juan said.

Juan knew he had to do something to help. When he started raising money for the family, Syracuse school district students and staff embraced Pablo’s cause as if they, too, were relatives.

Juan, who is in the National Honor Society and plans to become an athletic trainer and physical therapist, turned for fund-raising advice to a family friend who owns a company that makes promotional products for businesses. The friend gave him a huge break on the cost of making T-shirts and bracelets for him to sell.

The blue T-shirts Juan designed say “SCSD fights for Pablo” on the front and “Cancer is a word not a sentence” on the back.

Juan went straight away to Henninger soccer coach Scott Fiello for help and got lots of it from him. Nico plays soccer and Pablo, who is crazy for soccer, often goes with him to practice or games so a lot of people at Henninger know him. The soccer team signed a ball and gave it to Nico, along with a Henninger soccer jersey.

Juan said just about every Henninger teacher bought one of the T-shirts.

Henninger parent Kim Zook, whose son also plays soccer, watched plenty of games with the Saralegui family. When she heard about Pablo’s illness and what Juan was doing, she pitched in. She sold shirts at the high school. She sold them at Huntington, K-8 School, where she also has children.

Zook sold 10 to staff members who don’t even know the family and maybe 50 all told at Huntington, where Thursday was “Go Blue for Pablo Day.” Pablo is one of the happiest kids Zook knows.

At Frazer elementary school, where Pablo goes, students and staff bought shirts and bracelets, too. People are selling buying them at Franklin Elementary, too.

More people besides have offered help, Nico said. Pablo’s teachers have collected money and sent the family gift cards and his old teachers have helped too.

Pablo’s mom, Alejandra Saralegui, is grateful for the positive energy that comes with all the gifts and donations. She said she and her husband, Martin, both work and insurance is covering the cost of Pablo’s illness, so they are not in need. They plan to donate the gifts and money to someone who is.

“I just want to donate to kids who have the same problem,” Pablo said.

His family believes in the importance of staying positive in the face of the bad news. There are four children, Nico, 17, Diego, 13, Pablo and little sister Luna, 8.

“We’re so thankful for the positive thoughts because positive energy is always a plus,” Alejandra Saralegui said, speaking in Spanish, with Nico interpreting. The family originally is from Uruguay.

Nico and his mom say Pablo has a kind of cancer rarely seen in children. He started chemotherapy last week. They say he will have four rounds of it that will each keep him hospitalized for several nights.

He is being treated at Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital, where the support has been wonderful, so the family will probably donate the gifts through the hospital because the hospital has been so incredible, Nico said.

Pablo is all smiles when he talks about the support he’s received, especially from Juan. He wears one of the blue bracelet with his name on it.

Juan is still waiting for sales to wrap up and for his various volunteer sales people to report back in and for everyone to pay up. He projects he will raise between $2,000 and $2,500 for the Saralegui family. He said the T-shirts are costing him $4 each and he’s charging $10. The bracelets cost 50 cents and he’s selling them for $2 each.

This may only be the beginning for Juan and fund-raising.

“It makes me want to do a lot more, like right now I want to start more fund-raising. Like with National Honor Society, we’re doing an MS walk. I want to start selling bracelets for that, too. I want to do a lot more charity work than I do now,” he said.